Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Jessie B. Rittenhouse, ed. (1869–1948). The Little Book of Modern Verse. 1917.

Nicholas Vachel Lindsay

On the Building of Springfield

LET not our town be large—remembering

That little Athens was the Muses’ home;

That Oxford rules the heart of London still,

That Florence gave the Renaissance to Rome.

Record it for the grandson of your son—

A city is not builded in a day:

Our little town cannot complete her soul

Till countless generations pass away.

Now let each child be joined as to a church

To her perpetual hopes, each man ordained;

Let every street be made a reverent aisle

Where music grows, and beauty is unchained.

Let Science and Machinery and Trade

Be slaves of her, and make her all in all—

Building against our blatant restless time

An unseen, skillful, mediæval wall.

Let every citizen be rich toward God.

Let Christ, the beggar, teach divinity—

Let no man rule who holds his money dear.

Let this, our city, be our luxury.

We should build parks that students from afar

Would choose to starve in, rather than go home—

Fair little squares, with Phidian ornament—

Food for the spirit, milk and honeycomb.

Songs shall be sung by us in that good day—

Songs we have written—blood within the rhyme

Beating, as when old England still was glad,

The purple, rich, Elizabethan time.

Say, is my prophecy too fair and far?

I only know, unless her faith be high,

The soul of this our Nineveh is doomed,

Our little Babylon will surely die.

Some city on the breast of Illinois

No wiser and no better at the start,

By faith shall rise redeemed—by faith shall rise

Bearing the western glory in her heart—

The genius of the Maple, Elm and Oak,

The secret hidden in each grain of corn—

The glory that the prairie angels sing

At night when sons of Life and Love are born—

Born but to struggle, squalid and alone,

Broken and wandering in their early years.

When will they make our dusty streets their goal,

Within our attics hide their sacred tears?

When will they start our vulgar blood athrill

With living language—words that set us free?

When will they make a path of beauty clear

Between our riches and our liberty?

We must have many Lincoln-hearted men—

A city is not builded in a day—

And they must do their work, and come and go

While countless generations pass away.